Mayrig

Mayrig in Armenian means mother. It is a long-term documentary photographic project where I delve into the axes that cross my motherland, Armenia. Being part of the diaspora, my family infected me with my attachment to my roots and my origin. I needed to understand better my history, where I came from. The camera served as an excuse to be able to talk to people and share moments of their day to day with them. Eight years ago, I began to go once or twice a year to meet my past. I noticed the commonalities in my story. The feeling so strong for the homeland and at the same time the constant sensation of instability, threat and loss.

Armenia is a country, a religion and a language. It is difficult to classify it. It can be said that it is a culture that from the beginning of its history suffered persecution until the most important, the genocide that began in 1915. This event was transcendental for the lives of my great-grandparents and continues to be a transgenerational trauma that drags on for generations until the present day. As part of the diaspora, we share a lot of our history, but at times the perspective is only from an outside observer. Children from a very young age are related to war, for example, the clothes they wear with camouflaged prints, the acts in the kindergarten where they perform defense drills in case of a possible attack situation, the cabinets with weapons in schools to be able to defend themselves and be prepared, some houses with shots in the facades among others.

The project shares the daily lives of children and especially those who live in border towns, what they have to go through in order to raise awareness of what we are allowing, a world that naturalizes war. Adolescents are dying every day in Armenia due to a political conflict over territory, they are deaths that could be avoided and it’s a responsibility to share what is happening. How can we think about the future if we are risking future generations?